Copyright Statement

Abstract

This paper reports results from the 2009 national survey component of a preliminary
investigation into the relationship between loneliness, housing, and health. The paper
begins with i) a discussion ofloneliness in contemporary societies, ii) recent findings
of growing levels of loneliness, and iii) its alarming implications for human suffering
and health costs. Our survey results considered next, suggest that loneliness, housing
and health are connected and that there may be grounds for policy to make positive
interventions in at least four fields.

This paper asks whether housing, loneliness and health are connected in contemporary
Australia, and if they are, is it a nexus that can be addressed positively through
housing policy. Since loneliness has only recently emerged as a generalised and
disturbing feature of contemporary societies (Flood 2005; Franklin 2009) there is
practically no evidence of housing policy that addresses it explicitly or directly. It
will be argued that high and increasing rates ofloneliness are relevant to future
housing policy, not least because housing, loneliness and health are interlinked.

Loneliness is highly distributed socially and spatially but has remained largely hidden
and difficult to detect (Franklin and Tranter 2008). Research on loneliness, housing
and health offers policy makers a timely opportunity to broaden housing policy to
address a major social structural problem of our time with considerable scope to
increase well-being and social vitality (Bauman 2005; Cacioppo et al. 2009). While
recent housing policy has focused on building social cohesion, social inclusion and
reducing social isolation in areas characterized by social disadvantage and
marginalization, recent research on loneliness demonstrates that these policy
objectives have become relevant to a much wider set of cultural settings, sectors of
the built enviromuent and places. This paper argues that housing policy designed to
address a more evenly distributed and yet pernicious form of contemporary loneliness,
with momentous ramifications for health and wellness, cannot rely on simply
extending social contact or social networks. As Bauman (2000,2003), Putnam (2000)
and many others have argued, the current epidemic ofloneliness is not about social
connectivity and the net quantum of social interactions (which for many has actually
increased) but about the quality of the social bonds enacted and maintained. Recent
ARC funded research on loneliness among older people in residential housing was
entitled 'Alone in a Crowd' (Jaworski and Moyle 2008) and reported on how
residential propinquity can be converted into social bonds that matter, endure and
enrich. This, in a nutshell, is the challenge for housing policy makers on a much
wider scale. Not all of the causes ofloneliness are linked directly to housing,
although the fastest growing and soon-to-be dominant housing form, single person
housing, certainly is. We also present results for the 'other' category, but as this is
a mixed group that is not clearly defined, do not refer to it in the analyses.
Nonetheless, the lived experience ofloneliness has a housing context, is spatially
concentrated in some places, and is located in some housing types and tenures more
than others. This paper makes a contribution to the geography and lived experience
of Bauman' s liquid modernity and demonstrates how his concern for loneliness as a
structural outcome of looser social bonds plays out across the city and has
ramifications for both health and local social relations.